Being Agents of Change Within Their Community

Mary Greeley Medical Center (MGMC) is one of the largest hospitals and medical facilities in Iowa. They have a staff of more than 1,500 and serve a community base of over 389,000 people across 14 counties. They average over 8,000 inpatients and 150,000+ outpatient visits a year. Since the first day they opened their doors to their Ames, Iowa community, they have strived to provide the best quality medical service to every patient. MGMC is very proud to have achieved both Magnet status in American’s Nurses’ Credentialing Center and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. They are one of only 12 hospitals in the nation to have achieved both. From a technology perspective, MGMC was looking to modernize legacy systems and needed to implement solutions to empower their workforce, improve employee engagement and install collaborative platforms that work well both internally and externally to take them to the next level and continue their reputation of excellence in health care and patient treatment.

MGMC saw the need to move toward a digital culture so their staff could adopt and embrace new technology, drive organizational change management (OCM) and deploy modern platforms such as Office 365 throughout the entire medical center. The Mary Greeley IT team worked with Planet Technologies on transforming the MGMC collaboration elements to prepare their workforce for a more modern healthcare environment.

Deploying New Microsoft Technology with Organizational Change Management

One of MGMC’s main goals was to improve internal communication, specifically email. The existing primary communication tool for their staff was Exchange 2010 and the internal email process was overloaded and antiquated. Because the hospital is open 24 hours a day and year-round, they needed a more synchronous and efficient solution. MGMC IT department did not have the bandwidth to support the daily operations work and the new changes the hospital was about to go through. To achieve these goals and implement these changes, MGMC understood that they would need to include a strategic look at organizational change management (OCM) and the real impacts this would have on their end users for this to be a success. First, Planet and MGMC developed a plan to deploy Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams to create a unified and agile experience for their workforce. Planet also worked to ensure the new technology was properly secured and followed MGMC’s updated security and governance standards. Planet Technologies deployment and adoption plan helped to modernize the MGMC workforce and created streamlined communications processes.

Planet conducted internal assessments to understand MGMC culture and pain points. Based on that research, Planet was able to get a deeper understanding of the staff’s technical understanding, awareness, and constraints. 50% to 60% of MGMC workforce are nurses and to decrease their technical issues, missed messages and short battery lives, each nurse will be issued an iPhone. This improvement will allow nurses to optimize their experience, have modern applications on one device and provide a more connected workforce. Planet created a SharePoint site to track all policy decisions and changes so MGMC could ensure end-users were up-to-date on governance standards. Lastly, within one month MGMC had 100 Microsoft Teams and employee engagement had increased significantly with 1400 employees using the Microsoft Teams application.

“The internal interview process helped identify where users were struggling in their digital workplace, how the CEO envisioned MGMC’s future, and helped Planet create a plan to transform Mary Greeley work culture. Additionally, the alignment and the dialog between the IT team and the business led this project to success” 

– Pierre-Yves Delacote, Planet Cloud Strategist for OCM

Driving Adoption with the “Evolve 365 Champions Program” 

As O365/M365 technology continues to develop MGMC recognizes they need to be proactive and make sure their staff has the necessary knowledge and tools to adjust those changes. The IT team wanted to encourage employees to adopt the new technologies and to have the confidence and independence to handle issues before seeking assistance.  

A component of this plan was to create excitement and momentum for the new technology MGMC was about to implement. In order to do so, they introduced the “Evolve 365 Champions Program.” Planet’s team of Learning Strategists in conjunction with MGMC identified influential staff members to both spread the word and lead by example on best ways to utilize the Office 365 products for day-to-day work assignments. The Champions Program provided useful feedback, which the organization could implement into their new culture creating an environment set up for long-term adoption. As a result, the program provided value to all MGMC employees who became more comfortable using upgraded Office 365 products and prepared them for future changes. During an eight-month time span, employees watched 330 hours of content on the Evolves 365 platform and their end user training had a 97% return rate.  

After completing the Evolve 365 courses, users were able to adapt and implement Microsoft Team into their daily workflow. As seen in the graph above, users were the most active in messages, calls and meetings which allowed communication between users to be clearer and more concise.  

Planet provided MGMC a Microsoft 365 learning platform that allowed users to become experts in Office 365 products. Users have direct access to training links from Evolve 365 and presentation slides. 

Conclusion  

As a result of the Mary Greenly Medical Center and Planet Technologies partnership, legacy systems and technical collateral were transformed into a modern workplace where staff and patients can thrive. MGMC’s migration was a success and the new collaboration platforms helped to improve the workflow for all their employees. 

MGMC is now set up for future success with updated and rebuilt workflows which can be easily and continuously updated to continue that success well into the future. The new organizational change management (OCM) facilitated by their new M365 environment keeps them leading in their market and the staff is more engaged and empowered than ever and looking forward to the continuing their long-standing tradition of service to their patients and community.